Mountains out of molehills

I was planning on writing about something else today, but as often happens, I find myself behind schedule, so I'm just going to make a quick point for now. I wrote about my take on the (in?)famous Mike Vanderboegh letter to the editor just over a week ago.

Mr. Vanderboegh's detractors, you'll remember, were in a state of high dudgeon, with normally temperate people (and some not so temperate) unable to express the depth of their indignation without resorting to obscenities, over concerns that Mike V.'s letter would "make us look bad." I pointed out then that I seriously doubted that the letter would cause anything close to the reaction among the general, non-aligned (in terms of the gun rights/citizen disarmament debate) populace that it did in the "maintain political correctness at all times" wing of the gun blogging community. I'm going to run the risk here of coming across as the kind of smug smartass who says "I told you so," and state that I think events are proving me correct.

A couple quick searches of the newspaper in which Mike V.'s letter appeared fail to turn up any sign of outraged rebuttals (or any other kind of rebuttal). The usual suspects among the forcible citizen disarmament advocates have been silent, as well. We all know that the Brady Campaign reads at least some of the gun blogs that have discussed this (they even read mine from time to time), so they can't be unaware of the letter, but there's been nary a word from the Bradyites.

I submit that if Helmke, et al. believed that this letter presented an opportunity to damage the gun rights advocacy movement, they would be quick to exploit it (look at the injured tone of their manufactured outrage over the Mary McFate/Mary Lou Sapone incident). Instead, there has been nothing.

Being the "radical" that I am, actually, I can't help but wonder if the Brady Campaign is just as eager as some gun rights bloggers are to see this issue go away. What if the advocates of forcible citizen disarmament actually fear the idea of more people thinking about how a handgun can defeat an army?

Isn't that an interesting thought?

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