Welcome back, Zumbo

I had been one of the holdouts in forgiving Zumbo for his astonishingly foolish remarks equating homeland defense rifles with "terrorism," but it is now, I think, time to embrace a scarred comrade in arms (even if his wounds were largely self-inflicted), rather than throw away what he can do to advance the cause of gun rights in America.

His initial apologies fell rather short, but this letter to CCRKBA's Alan Gottlieb indicates to me that he will be better as an ally than as an enemy.

I was wrong when I recently suggested that wildlife agencies should ban semiautomatic firearms I erroneously called “assault rifles” for hunting. I insulted legions of my fellow gun owners in the process by calling them “terrorist rifles.” I can never apologize enough for having worn blinders when I should have been wearing bifocals.

But unlike those who would destroy the Second Amendment right to own a firearm – any firearm – I have learned from my embarrassing mistake. My error should not be used, as it has been in recent days by our common enemies, in an effort to dangerously erode our right to keep and bear arms.

This comes none too soon, as today, Paul Helmke himself made his pitch to try to exploit what he perceives to be a fault line in the gun owning fraternity. Helmke even quotes Bill Schneider referring to gun rights activists as the "black rifle Gestapo." Godwin's Law lives on.

The Gun Guys have, oddly enough (I would imagine that he's the first hunting writer to get that kind of treatment from them), elevated Zumbo to some kind of saintly status, for arguing against so-called "assault weapons" (they even dishonestly portrayed his stance as advocating restrictions on ownership of these firearms, when he actually only argued against their use for hunting--and now he acknowledges that he was way off base with that). It will be amusing to see how they react when he starts extolling the virtues of homeland defense firearms, and of tactical shooting in general.

As they generally do when facts become inconvenient for them (as they inevitably do), they'll probably just ignore his conversion to freedom advocacy.