Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Friday, August 01, 2008

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?

III

3 comments:

David Codrea said...

I was planning on commenting on the singular lack of responses--outraged or otherwise--to MV's letter. As you know, my blog is currently down, but "great minds think alike".

It seems all the PSH came from "our" side, and from the ugliness initiated by some, I use that term generously.

chris horton said...

Thanks for the H/T Kurt!
CIII

DJMooreTX said...

What does it say about the relatively strengths of the two camps that one side can engage in a very vocal and public debate over core principles, and the other must cower in silence?

(Of course, they may well be thinking in terms of not stopping your enemy from shooting himself in the foot. I think we're stronger for it, but they may not have anticipated that.)