To be perfectly honest, I might not have agreed with the political orientation or goals of The Trace. I definitely don’t like the person backing them financially. But they have done some good journalism, and for a while, there were almost certainly NRA insiders leaking to them. It was enough to make me lament we didn’t have anyone on our side doing what The Trace was doing.
Enter gun journalist and fellow Delco native Stephen Gutowski, who has founded “The Reload” which is intended to bring quality journalism to the gun issue. It’s a subscription, but these days if you want good journalism, you have to pay for it. The Google Algorithms promote garbage, and that’s what you get today with ad dependent rags. So I’m happy to pay the $70/yr to support his work. They also have a forum, and to be honest, gun people are short of places we can communicate with each other. So I’m hoping this is successful.
Yep, I subscribed as well. It’s a little spendy on the news subscription market (Taibbi and Greenwald are about $50 each, IIRC), relative to the amount and significance of content produced, but I’m looking forward to what he can build up to.
Thanks for the tip! I need to start putting my money where my mouth is more, so I hopped on board.
“. . .we didn’t have anyone on our side doing what The Trace was doing.”
The reason why is obvious. Anyone on the pro-gun side who did, would have been hung by their balls and labeled a leftist dupe and infiltrator, bent only on destroying the NRA.
I learned long ago that with any issue, you will never learn the truth about its insiders and personalities by seeking out their/your allies and worshipers. You have to go to their enemies, and then check, check, check, and double-check on what you find out from them, which will probably not be pretty.
I don’t want to name a year, because they slip past me too quickly anymore, but can you imagine any pro-gun individual maintaining their status in the movement, had they attempted to expose WLP and Friends for what they already were, several years before the truth was being outed by The Trace and other “enemy” sources? What was that big issue a few years ago? Whether someone was a Muslim Brotherhood mole?
I used to get on state gun rights activists’ shitlists just by reminding them of what they, themselves had once said about candidates whose asses they were now kissing as the “pro-gun” candidates.
The gun rights movement has been a magnet for opportunists and charlatans for decades now — for cause — and no one will hate you more for challenging their warm-fuzzy delusions than gun owners. They want “simple” first, and what good journalists do is explain why nothing is simple, including that you can never trust the motivations for people telling you they’re on “your side.”
He appears to be injecting activism and editorial opinion into his articles. Isn’t this what we get after the opposition about? Sorry… not worth the $70 to get more opinion/activism in the news. Who reports just eh facts anymore?
I’m surprised I beat Andy B. to the cynicism punch.
IDK…An article on the administrations plans for 80% receivers claims a receiver HAS TO have parts in it to qualify.
No, it doesn’t – it has to be able to receive the parts, but a stripped receiver is still a receiver.
If they cannot get the very basics right?